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One Dance with a Duke
One Dance with a Duke by Tessa Dare is $3.99! This is the first book in Dare’s Stud Club trilogy and features a horse breeder hero. Readers say this one is slow to start with, but recommend powering through! There is a marriage of convenience aspect that reviewers really enjoyed.
In One Dance with a Duke—the first novel in Tessa Dare’s delightful new trilogy—secrets and scandals tempt the irresistible rogues of the Stud Club to gamble everything for love.
A handsome and reclusive horse breeder, Spencer Dumarque, the fourth Duke of Morland, is a member of the exclusive Stud Club, an organization so select it has only ten members—yet membership is attainable to anyone with luck. And Spencer has plenty of it, along with an obsession with a prize horse, a dark secret, and, now, a reputation as the dashing “Duke of Midnight.” Each evening he selects one lady for a breathtaking midnight waltz. But none of the women catch his interest, and nobody ever bests the duke—until Lady Amelia d’Orsay tries her luck.
In a moment of desperation, the unconventional beauty claims the duke’s dance and unwittingly steals his heart. When Amelia demands that Spencer forgive her scapegrace brother’s debts, she never imagines that her game of wits and words will lead to breathless passion and a steamy proposal. Still, Spencer is a man of mystery, perhaps connected to the shocking murder of the Stud Club’s founder. Will Amelia lose her heart in this reckless wager or win everlasting love?
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Too Scot to Handle
Too Scot to Handle by Grace Burrowes is $1.99! This is book two in the Windham series, though I’m sure it can be read as a standalone. Granted I’m not a big historical romance reader, but I’ve always found Burrowes’ romances to be not as spicy as I’d like them.
A MAN WITH MANY TALENTS
As a captain in the army, Colin MacHugh led men, fixed what was broken, and fought hard. Now that he’s a titled gentleman, he’s still fighting-this time to keep his bachelorhood safe from all the marriage-minded debutantes. Then he meets the intriguing Miss Anwen Windham, whose demure nature masks a bonfire waiting to roar to life. When she asks for his help to raise money for the local orphanage, he’s happy to oblige.
Anwen is amazed at how quickly Lord Colin takes in hand a pack of rambunctious orphan boys. Amazed at how he actually listens to her ideas. Amazed at the thrill she gets from the rumble of his Scottish burr and the heat of his touch. But not everyone enjoys the success of an upstart. And Colin has enemies who will stop at nothing to ruin him and anybody he holds dear.
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Tangled
Tangled by Emma Chase is $1.99! This is a contemporary romance and was part of podcast discussion on misogyny in romance. Though the book has a 4-star rating on Goodreads and was a Reader’s Choice award winner in 2013, some readers just couldn’t get past the problematic banter. However, many thought the romance was equal parts fun and sexy! Any opinions from the Bitchery?
Drew Evans is a winner. Handsome and arrogant, he makes multimillion dollar business deals and seduces New York’s most beautiful women with just a smile. He has loyal friends and an indulgent family. So why has he been shuttered in his apartment for seven days, miserable and depressed?
He’ll tell you he has the flu.
But we all know that’s not really true.
Katherine Brooks is brilliant, beautiful and ambitious. She refuses to let anything – or anyone – derail her path to success. When Kate is hired as the new associate at Drew’s father’s investment banking firm, every aspect of the dashing playboy’s life is thrown into a tailspin. The professional competition she brings is unnerving, his attraction to her is distracting, his failure to entice her into his bed is exasperating.
Then, just when Drew is on the cusp of having everything he wants, his overblown confidence threatens to ruin it all. Will he be able untangle his feelings of lust and tenderness, frustration and fulfillment? Will he rise to the most important challenge of his life?
Can Drew Evans win at love?
Tangled is not your mother’s romance novel. It is an outrageous, passionate, witty narrative about a man who knows a lot about women…just not as much as he thinks he knows. As he tells his story, Drew learns the one thing he never wanted in life, is the only thing he can’t live without.
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The Grace Year
The Grace Year by Kim Liggett is $2.99! I thought this one was slightly better than okay. I gave it a C+:
The Grace Year is described as a “haunting, feminist YA speculative thriller,” and I mostly agree with that assessment. It’s twisted, memorable, and eerie.
A speculative thriller in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Power. Optioned by Universal and Elizabeth Banks to be a major motion picture!
“A visceral, darkly haunting fever dream of a novel and an absolute page-turner. Liggett’s deeply suspenseful book brilliantly explores the high cost of a misogynistic world that denies women power and does it with a heart-in-your-throat, action-driven story that’s equal parts horror-laden fairy tale, survival story, romance, and resistance manifesto. I couldn’t stop reading.” – Libba Bray, New York Times bestselling author
No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.
Girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.
Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for their chance to grab one of the girls in order to make their fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.
With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between.
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That is the grimmest Tessa Dare book I ever read–murder, a pregnant teenager, gambling addiction with looming consequences, and the whole “club” premise is a perfect example of some people having way too much time and money on their hands to play ridiculous games. I skipped the rest of that series. It’s probably fine if you don’t open it expecting effervescent, improbable hijinks, but since that’s why she’s one of my In Case of Emergency, Break Glass authors, it didn’t work for me.
Praise glob Spindle Cove took off later so she could commit to the fun ones.
Tangled was one of those books that “everyone” loved, but it was a DNF. But I did really enjoy the rest of the books in this series. If I recall this was Roswell fanfic and this is one of her books that is being adapted into a movie.
‘Tangled is not your mother’s romance novel’
*Eye twitch*
I don’t know why you keep quoting Goodreads ratings after all the revelations about how frequently they’re manipulated and how little Goodreads is willing to do about it.
@Vasha: Some of the information is still useful to readers, myself included, especially when it comes to trigger warnings. I also use the ratings as a good barometer for whether I want to add it to my TBR pile or keep a note of it elsewhere.
@Ren Benton/Lena Brassard thanks for the heads up – I semi-recently picked up Tessa Dare’s first(?) book Goddess of the Hunt, expecting the usual Tessa Dare romp based on the description. The first half was, but it took a turn into a gothic novel in the second half, which I was not expecting. Still a good book, and in fairness to Tessa Dare, the u-turn is foreshadowed in the first half, I just wasn’t paying attention.
@Vasha and @Amanda I also find Goodreads reviews more helpful than, say, the reviews on Amazon. Goodreads reviews will generally give you an idea of what some readers liked and others didn’t – I use that way more than the overall rating. I have definitely picked up a book due to a thoughtful 3-star review where I didn’t mind what the reviewer didn’t like, and passed on books where the top reviews were just unadulterated gushing, emojis, and pictures of who the reviewers thought the leads looked like.
Rachel Lacey’s upcoming sapphic You’ve Got Mail inspired book Read Between the Lines is one of Amazon’s First Reads, meaning it’s free for Prime users and 1.99 for non-Prime users right now!
I think the title of the Rachel Lacey book is Read between the Lines?
oops you already said that, sorry! @Layla
I loved One Dance With The Duke and the entire Stud Club series. Some people who begin with her light, bubbly Avon romances are surprised that Stud Club is a little darker in tone (some people have expressed that surprise in this thread, even). Her two earliest series were published by Ballantine, and they are more epic in scope and really worth it. I would highly recommend the Stud Club series.
I recently made the switch from StoryGraph from Goodreads and one thing SG reviews have is a specific place for trigger or content warnings. You don’t have to dig into the actual reviews (and maybe read a spoiler!) to find warnings, which I really liked. Plus it’s not owned by Amazon!
I read a book recently that had a 4.04 goodreads rating and was objectively bad. It was full of details that were contradictory and/or made no sense. I seriously wondered if it was written with some kind of story generating software. I’ve lost all faith in goodreads ratings.
All free:
A Taste by Tawna Fenske and Erin Nichols
Married by CHristmas by Noelle Adams
TANGLED, et al., is difficult; more accurately, I found it off-putting, probably for the same reasons. Sexy times, humor? Sure, but not enough to make up for the manipulative MC.
While I loved Chase’s SUSTAINED with its not-really-asshat-smitten hero, the other titles in her Legal Brief’s series, especially OVERRULED, were so uncomfortable for me. An attorney trying to get back with his ex AT HER WEDDING invites his work-partner-friend-with-benefits to accompany him. Highly-intelligent people chucking their commonsense and self-respect out the door to make something happen that will never happen. Ugh x 100. /rant
A Night to Surrender by Tessa Dare is $1.99
Love is Blind by Lyndsay Sands is $1.99
I did have an immature giggle at “Stud Club.”
Vasha, this is why I have a large friends list at GR; their reviews are listed first, and I pick (as well as actual friends) people whose literary taste is close to mine, either generally or in one specific area.
I’ve been a part of Goodreads for well over a decade and I find it mostly helpful for me in keeping track of books. I use a lot of shelves there, so I can quickly find books by things like tropes, format (kindle,Audible,Chirp,etc.) or year read. I follow a relatively small group of reviewers there and rarely look at community reviews. I think the biggest problem with Goodread ratings is that they are inflated. If it’s someone besides the friends I follow, I’m much more interested in the 3 star reviews, as they point out things the gushing reviews don’t.
When I fist started using Goodreads they had a guideline on what the star ratings meant. I remember 3 stars=good, 4 stars=very good, and 5 stars=excellent. For years I gave most of the books I read and enjoyed 3 stars because they were enjoyable but nothing outstanding. The stars were not equivalent to letter grades like they seem to be now. Nowadays I admit that I give a lot of 3.5 stars (usually B-) and usually round up since most people now see a 3 star book as a C grade and it’s come to mean “not recommended.” So I, too, have fallen victim to rating inflation! 🙂
I still give 3 stars more than any other rating – in part because it’s my default rating for “I know I’ve read this but don’t remember having a strong reaction to it” as well as my general theory of “average books get an average rating.” (I can be pretty generous with 4s, but am pretty stingy with 5s; some years I don’t give out a 5.)
I enjoyed One Dance with a Duke. It wasn’t light hearted, it was more intense. But it did show character growth and characters dealing with stuff. Not fluffy but enjoyable.
@Lisa F.–one of the characters in the book cannot say “Stud Club” without laughing.
It’s not my favorite Tessa Dare series by a long shot, but I’ll reread the first two in the Stud Club series. I don’t like the third one. The “hero” of that one was too much of a jerk in the other two for me to want him to have a happy ending. I don’t mind the darker plot themes so much but honestly the heroine in “One Dance with a Duke” is a ninny.
As much as I like ONE DANCE WITH A DUKE, I find the obstacles a bit artificial, premise of the Club a bit why? and that their lives a bit at odds (he’s a loner, she likes to throw parties). I did like the growth of the characters, and grew to like them. I also like the new covers–a bit like the new Bridgerton covers, photographs with white lettering.